On Two Babylonian Kings

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The Impact of Open Access on Teaching—How Far Have We Come?

This article seeks to understand how far the United Kingdom higher education (UK HE) sector has progressed towards open access (OA) availability of the scholarly literature it requires to support courses of study. It uses Google Scholar, Unpaywall and Open Access Button to identify OA copies of a random sample of articles copied under the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) HE Licence to support teaching. The quantitative data analysis is combined with interviews of, and a workshop with, HE practitioners to investigate four research questions. Firstly, what is the nature of the content being used to support courses of study? Secondly, do UK HE establishments regularly incorporate searches for open access availability into their acquisition processes to support teaching? Thirdly, what proportion of content used under the CLA Licence is also available on open access and appropriately licenced? Finally, what percentage of content used by UK HEIs under the CLA Licence is written by academics and thus has the potential for being made open access had there been support in place to enable this? Key findings include the fact that no interviewees incorporated OA searches into their acquisitions processes. Overall, 38% of articles required to support teaching were available as OA in some form but only 7% had a findable re-use licence; just 3% had licences that specifically permitted inclusion in an ‘electronic course-pack’. Eighty-nine percent of journal content was written by academics (34% by UK-based academics). Of these, 58% were written since 2000 and thus could arguably have been made available openly had academics been supported to do so

Pseudo-marginal Bayesian inference for Gaussian process latent variable models

A Bayesian inference framework for supervised Gaussian process latent variable models is introduced. The framework overcomes the high correlations between latent variables and hyperparameters by collapsing the statistical model through approximate integration of the latent variables. Using an unbiased pseudo estimate for the marginal likelihood, the exact hyperparameter posterior can then be explored using collapsed Gibbs sampling and, conditional on these samples, the exact latent posterior can be explored through elliptical slice sampling. The framework is tested on both simulated and real examples. When compared with the standard approach based on variational inference, this approach leads to significant improvements in the predictive accuracy and quantification of uncertainty, as well as a deeper insight into the challenges of performing inference in this class of models

Narratives as Responses to Interpersonal Violence: The Case of HIV

This chapter examines how narratives can act as dialogic responses to physical interpersonal violence, affirming positive routes of response and helping to generate new routes of this kind. It also explores the limitations of narratives as responses to physical interpersonal violence, in situations where such violence is strongly related to economic and other resource constraints, and situations where it may be difficult to build commonalities between narrative responses. The chapter draws on my ongoing research, using semi-structured interviews, about people’s experiences of HIV support in South Africa, in 2001 and 2012, and on my analysis of narratives produced within these interviews, predominantly by women, about HIV-linked interpersonal physical violence, predominantly by men

Science into policy: preparing for pandemic influenza

Authoratative government pandemic preparedness requires an evidence-based approach. The scientific advisory process that has informed the current UK pandemic preparedness plans is described. The final endorsed scientific papers are now publicly available

Aging and Degradation in Dilute Polymer Solutions

This paper describes studies of the properties of dilute solutions of polymers which have been found to reduce friction in turbulent flows. The substances tested, in solution in tap water, were guar gum, polyethylene oxide (Union Carbide 'Polyox' WSR 301) and polyacrylamide (Dow 'Separan' AP 30). It had been previously found that solutions of 'Polyox' and 'Separan' exhibit normal-stress difference effects. Correspondingly for'Polyox' solutions, it has been reported that the pressure increment at the mouth of a pitot tube, or open-ended tube facing into the flow, can be reduced below the value [formula] normal for Newtonian liquids, where [Greek rho] is density and V is speed. The present experiments began as a further investigation of this loss of pitot pressure. It was found that the pitot loss reduced with time, and that with 'Polyox' solutions other normal-stress difference effects showed a similar aging, without apparently impairing the ability of the liquid to produce turbulent drag reduction. Continued exposure of the liquid to intense turbulence does, however, lead to a degradation of the drag reduction